


Rain in Arizona

by Vana



Series: Original fiction [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, more original stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 20:05:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3741934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I wrote this some time ago, maybe posted it, can't remember. But now I redid it just a tiny bit. This story informed a lot of my subsequent writing -- the style and the capturing of a sense of place.</p></blockquote>





	Rain in Arizona

The ceiling was leaking in a boardinghouse in Phoenix.

"It's been five years," he said.

"He married a violinist."

"How did you find out where I was?" he asked.

"Well, I called you?"

"Let me start over -- why did you care where I was?"

"You were the song behind the static," she said. He said nothing, and he closed his eyes again.

 

Sun glaring off sand woke her up at six thirty. She uncurled herself from the armchair; he was still sleeping on the rough striped mattress. She took his keys from his desk. His pickup was parked on the street a block away, a ticket fluttering from under the windshield wiper. She threw it in second to fourth and drove out the county line road until the only thing on the side of the highway was trailer parks. The truck's gears shifted without the clutch, and when she stopped at a gas station to get a vanilla Coke, she left the car idling while she pulled the keys out of the ignition.

A Pomeranian was leashed to the door handle of the station, its fluffy luxury out of place in the desert winds where everyone was wearing faded blue jeans and beer t-shirts. 

"What's her name?" she asked the woman behind the counter.

"Sparkle."

On her way back out to the truck she knelt down to pet Sparkle between the ears. The dog licked her hands and ankles. The woman looked dully out of the shop window.

 

"That's a heck of a truck," she said to him, unlocking his room door.

"Why did you go?" he asked. 

"Why did I go?"

"I mean where."

"To see the country. How did you know it was me?"

"My keys, you, and the truck were gone. Besides, who's gonna take that truck?"

 

A mile away there was a mansion that had been turned into apartments. Piano scales flowed from a window on the second floor. An old neighbor on a walker hobbled by: stopped under the window.

"Hello up there," the neighbor called in a tinny thin voice. "Frances?"

The scales stopped. A young woman leaned out the window and the wind blew her hair around her face. "Sorry, there's no Frances here," she said.

"I'm sorry, missy." The old woman faltered, then spoke again. "Years ago there was a lady who lived in this house, Frances Smith. She used to play the piano just like that. I heard she went off to a home about ten years ago, but when I heard you, I just had to see if maybe she'd, if she'd possibly come back."

The young woman smiled in the way of an artist interrupted, even though she was only on Book 2 of _Mikrokosmos_. "Sorry," she said again. "Just me."

The old woman shuffled on. In her one-room apartment, she looked for a record that hadn't survived the past four moves, looked for a newspaper from 1973 and eventually forgot why she was looking for any of it. It was surely almost time for bed.

 

"Damn," he said when he woke up, finally. The blue ticking stripe of the mattress was the same faded sky color as the jeans he'd fallen asleep in. "Damn damn."

She was making tea with an electric immersion heater. "What's the matter?"

"Daylight savings time."

"What's the matter with daylight savings time?"

"It means I lose an hour."

"Arizona doesn't use daylight savings time, does it?"

"Damn," he said again.

"What's the matter then?"

"If Arizona did use it, then I'd get an extra hour," he said.

"That's not the way it works either." She couldn't help laughing at his absurd confusion. "You'd lose an hour anywhere but Arizona today."

He stood up suddenly, shirtless and skinny and everything. "Where are my keys?" 

"Where are you going?"

"Where or —?"

"I mean why."

"I'm going to drive to New Mexico. Then when I cross the border again, I'll have gotten my extra hour."

"What are you going to do with it?"

He walked over to her and kissed the top of her head. She almost dropped her cup of boiling water.

"Just sit in the sun."

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this some time ago, maybe posted it, can't remember. But now I redid it just a tiny bit. This story informed a lot of my subsequent writing -- the style and the capturing of a sense of place.


End file.
